Community Review

Edits inspired by people at various points in their career and knowledge paths and who work across different institution types and geographies — and potentially even different disciplines, depending on your intended reach — make work more understandable to a wider audience. An open model of peer review can provide a mixed bag of edits to consider, but as many hands make light work, you can alleviate the burden with a solid writing and editing crew and good project management.

It can be difficult to move from editing to community review, because there is always more editing that could be done. Here are some tips for moving from editing to community review.

1. Set a hard deadline for section editing before the document is closed to prepare for community review.
2. Determine what additional components the publication will have. Use the Ready to Ship List and Gathering Additional Components sections to make space for this information in your layout and in your work plan.
3. Develop an outreach plan for the Community Review period.

The Community Review Process

What might your community peer review process look like? Here is a template version of the workflow I use:

1. Create the Community Review file.
2. Share the newly-created Community Review document with the group for approval before kicking off community review emails.
3. Open permissions on the document and send it out for community review.
4. Take a couple weeks’ break from the project.
5. Send reminders about the open feedback period. Work on sections that are not part of community review, such as front matter. Execute other parts of the outreach plan, like conference attendance.
6. When it is time to end community review, change permissions on the document to remove access from community editors.

Creating the Community Review File

Create a new document and make sure everyone in the group has access to it (if using a networked platform). Create section headings for each main section of the publication, including Additional Components. If drafts are still scattered across several documents from the first draft and internal editing phase, combine individual section text into the new draft.

Transfer open comments from the previous round of internal editing, if applicable. If you need to click off some open comments that you still intend to address for whatever reason (often to reduce clutter on the page for readability), you can do that because you created a new draft, and the previous draft(s) should contain all unresolved comments from the previous round of editing (see version control for more notes about when to change drafts vs work within a draft).

Consider what context you might need to add to the community review document for the audience to understand where you are with the draft and what you want them to do with it. Some examples of contextual information includes:

• Instructions on how to make comments on the document.
• Discussion questions to guide the reviewers’ comments.
• A policy for where the document can be shared during community review.
• Selectively use comments to highlight particular section(s) you want people to focus on, but generally keep open comments to a minimum to reduce the clutter on the page, which can prevent some people from focusing.
• What community reviewers can expect when the document closes, i.e., “After the review period, the link will no longer be public, but all commenters will receive notification when the published version is available.”

For additional components not yet drafted, keep the heading and include a comment or short note that content is under construction and will be added after community review.

See the community review lead role for more information about the role of leading community review.

Community Review Outreach Tactics

Go back to the conversations you had when you were first getting the gang together about your intended audience. Ideally as a group, brainstorm a list of listservs, individuals, or other contact points that match your audience. Determine who in the group has access to each community or platform and can be a steward of information about the project to that community for the duration of your work. Determine which audiences or communities will be targeted for community review. See Appendix 9 for a template outreach spreadsheet.

Determine what you want the community to focus on during their review, and include this information in the call for reviewers. You may want to state that copyediting will be completed at a future date, and ask reviewers to focus on the content if possible. But it’s also okay if some people disregard this guidance: colleagues will help from wherever they are and with whatever they can contribute. Sometimes that is eager copyediting over a lunch break rather than deep critique with morning coffee.

Draft an announcement and ask the group to review and co-edit the draft. Use email or in-person outreach to share the document for community review. Ensure that all links within and to your document are live. Ensure that the link to your community review document is the document you intend to use, with the right permissions!  (You might want to test this with someone outside the core group before blasting listservs).

During Community Review

Community review should last long enough to encompass your outreach plan: at least a month, but as long as the team needs to get the feedback they desire. Send a couple of reminders over the community review process. Sending a reminder the day before review closes is often an effective moment to generate late interest. If you have a large outreach list, you can reduce the scope for reminders to the few lists that you think will have the most uptake.

It’s helpful to have attendance at an in-person event lined up during the community review period. Presenting the work in progress at a conference and asking for feedback will increase the amount of engagement you get from community review. Many colleagues may be interested in your work but overburdened with day-to-day activities. Given the time and space that a conference or professional gathering affords, many colleagues become more open to providing feedback and engaging in the work.

The most important thing to do during community review for co-authors is to rest! This is a great time to step away from the project completely and renew your energy for it. If you have a conference presentation or other outreach to work on, which is labor and not rest, consider establishing a long community review period. Schedule a few weeks’ rest for yourself in addition to the conference time.

Closing community review

When it is time to close community review, change the permissions on the document to disable public editing. Some colleagues will try to provide feedback after the due date and request permission for the document. This is an excellent outreach opportunity! If the volume of requests fits within your capacity, thank them for their interest, explain that the review period has ended, and ensure that they will receive information when the work is published. Add them to a list of contacts for publication marketing outreach.

Editing after Community Review

With community review closed, it’s time to review the comments, discussing the their contents and the edits they propose. Come up with a shared workflow for how you will address comments and make sure that this workflow is understood by all authors. Then divide the work.

Here is a sample workflow for address comments after community review:

1. Editors review comments and in-line suggested edits to the text. They maintain a list of all commenters for an Authors or Acknowledgements section of the publication.
2. Writers and editors determine whether to make the edits that each comment suggests. They accept or reject all suggested in-line text edits.
3. Create consistencies in voice.

Collecting Acknowledgements

Wait to close any comments until all contributors have been recorded somewhere for acknowledgement as community editors and you have discussed the most difficult conclusions with your co-authors. Record community editors’ names and email addresses so that you can inform them when the publication is released and thank them for their contributions.